


Recovery

by blackgoliath



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Addiction, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Drug Use, Drugs, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 07:51:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17484116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackgoliath/pseuds/blackgoliath
Summary: "O'Malley" is one hell of a drug, but Frank DuFresne refuses to remain a slave to his addiction. He is very firmly on the road to sobriety, thanks.(Meeting a hot ex-soldier kinda helps too.)





	Recovery

**Author's Note:**

> so can't say this one will update very quickly, but it's definitely something I've been working on for a while. more will come next month, probably
> 
> today's theme: detox sucks

“Well, you're all set.” The receptionist looked down at her clipboard, then back up again, her glasses perched on the end of her nose. “You're certain you've got everything you came with? Didn't leave anything in your room?”

“Yes, I'm certain.”

“And you're sure you don't want to sign up for our rehab program?” Through the little opening in the glass she sat behind, she passed him a pamphlet. He took it, even though he had gotten about ten of them during the six days he'd been here. “We've got a lovely facility, very highly rated.”

“No, um, I'm sure. But thank you.” He smiled and nodded as he tucked the pamphlet into his things, resolved to throw it into the closest trash can he could find.

“Alright.” The receptionist, her mandatory pitch complete, turned back to her computer. “Have a good day,” she said automatically, without looking up. 

“You too,” he said, just as automatically, and then he left.

Stepping outside felt like a rebirth; he'd been in that hospital for almost a week, unable to leave, using a payphone out in the main area as the only means of communication to the outside world. He'd called his mother every day, and when she, too, gently suggested rehab, he'd just as gently turned her down. 

He didn't need rehab. Frank DuFresne was clean now, and in all honesty taking the week off to dry out had been hard enough; he wasn’t about to go an entire month without going to work.

His mother thought it was a bad idea, of course. He understood why; this was his second time in detox, and she was worried it wouldn’t stick unless he  _ really  _ committed by going to rehab. But the vet’s office where he worked was already understaffed, and the gentle looks he’d gotten the first time around for having an addiction had started to wane. When you went to detox once, it was sad and you were just having a hard time and your coworkers quietly asked if you were okay, if you needed someone to talk to. When you went more than once, you were an addict who was in too deep with his own addiction to try and fix yourself, and nobody really had time for dealing with you and your inability to change.

Frank understood that, too. He couldn’t expect anyone to exhaust themselves trying to look after him. He was an adult, after all, and it was his own fault for falling off the wagon to begin with. He wasn’t about to be upset that all of the support and care he’d received when he’d first gone in had dried up when it turned out to be a problem that wasn’t so easily solved.

Or, well. He wasn’t going to dwell on being upset. He had to keep positive, keep looking ahead.

The bus ride home felt like it took hours, and Frank tried not to squirm in his seat. The feeling that the other passengers were looking at him - that they knew where he’d come from and why, could smell the terrible spray deodorant the in-patients had to use - was just his own imagination, and he knew that. Knowing and feeling were two very different things, however, and he practically hurried off the bus when they finally reached his stop, grateful to be free of a confined space that had started feeling like it was growing smaller with each passing minute.

His apartment, in opposition, felt welcoming and homey. It was such a relief to turn the hall light on after he’d stepped inside, to know that he wouldn’t have a random stranger lying three feet away from him in awkward silence after his failed attempts at conversation. He crouched down to scratch beneath his cat’s chin when she trotted up to him, smiling more genuinely than he had in days, resolving to get his landlord a nice gift basket in gratitude for agreeing to feed Cherry while he was gone.

Something with cheese, maybe. Gary did have a love of cheese.

There was mail on the kitchen table, likely collected and deposited by said landlord, and Frank set his bag down so that he could rifle through it. Most of it was spam, safely ignored, though there were a few bills that needed urgent attention. Frank frowned down at them. His credit card balance especially needed to be paid; he’d been relying far too much on it in the past year.

Immediately, automatically, he started budgeting in his head. He could pay the balance off all at once and it would be tight, but if he ate a little less for a few weeks, did the minimum payments on his hospital bills, he’d still have enough cash for his fix, it would be rough but he could do it--

Frank took a deep breath, forced his mind to clear. No, he couldn’t think like that anymore. Drugs had no place in his life now.

He sat down as he started to open and read his important mail, shifting slightly when Cherry leaped up into his lap so she would be more comfortable. He'd have to buy her some treats, reward her for living without him these past few days.

“You're a good girl, aren't you,” he cooed, gently scraping his fingernails along her cheeks and jaw. She purred, body vibrating, and Frank felt the last of his tension leaving him.

He couldn't sit around petting his cat forever, unfortunately. He didn't have to open the fridge to remember it was basically empty, and he needed to wash the shirts he'd worn at the hospital, and he wanted a real shower in a bathroom that wasn't just a tile floor and a bare stall like he was in prison instead of somewhere supposedly healing. He needed food - probably takeout, as much as he preferred to cook for himself - and he needed to dust, and he needed to call work to let them know he'd be coming back tomorrow--

He sighed, leaned down to rub his face against Cherry’s. She immediately jerked away and jumped down from his lap.

“Maybe I should have just gone to rehab,” he mumbled, staring at the floor. Cherry, already halfway out of the kitchen, did not respond.

Well. He'd made his decision. Dragging himself out of his chair, Frank picked up his bag from where he'd set it and made his way to his bedroom. Sitting at the kitchen table and moping wasn't going to get anything done, so he focused himself on the important tasks ahead of him.

His coworkers thought he was just some bum addict, falling into the habit rather than bettering himself. He would, he resolved, show them otherwise. He was going to show them  _ so hard _ by completing the chores he hadn't been able to do while in the hospital. And when he got back to work, they'd see that he was trying, that he was  _ fighting, _ that he wasn't letting the addiction win.

And then they'd respect him again, of course. The thought warmed him as he worked, moving around his small apartment and expertly keeping his balance whenever Cherry weaved around his legs. He only had to prove himself, and his coworkers would stop whispering behind his back about how he was cracking.

It was that simple.

\- - -

The problem was that Frank DuFresne had not started out with the intention to become an addict.

Not that anyone did, really. Very rarely did a person set out with “I'd like a drug addiction” in mind. Frank had been straightedge for a good portion of his life, in fact, trying to kindly tell off his friends for smoking weed or drinking any alcohol at parties, definitely not  _ judging  _ them but still managing to sound like a disappointed father who just discovered them raiding the liquor cabinet.

It had been almost an accident, the first time he’d tried something - or at least, that was how he thought of it. The drug was new, some combination of chemicals Frank couldn't remember if he tried, named “O'Malley” for the man who'd first started selling it. Frank had been at a party in college trying to catch the eye of a boy from his Calculus class when someone produced the substance, boasting that it would make you feel better than even cocaine. 

The boy Frank liked had taken a line, using a straw to inhale it through his nose. Frank was disgusted; how could someone he thought so highly of stoop so low? But then another line was laid out on the table, and everyone was staring expectantly at Frank.

He had actually drank at this party, and he was kinda tipsy, so maybe that was why he decided to try. Why he took his own straw and leaned down and sucked the pinkish powder into his body. If he was gonna be intoxicated, might as well go all in, right?

The boy from Calculus never did notice him or care what he'd done for that attention, but at the time, it hadn't mattered. O'Malley hit Frank hard and fast and it felt  _ good _ , he felt powerful, he felt like nothing could stop him and if anything or anyone tried to get in his way he'd simply tear them apart.

That was the first night he hurt someone, a girl from another course who happened to be at the party; he sweetly called her out on every stupid thing she'd ever done during their classes together, and found himself amused at how she ran off crying.

It was, when he sobered up, absolutely horrifying.

And yet he couldn't stop. Just that one hit had him thinking about it almost constantly in the following days, and it didn't take long before he found himself a supplier on campus.

He didn't know why he wanted it. He knew exactly why he wanted it. He didn't have to think about either when he was using.

O'Malley brought something out in him that he'd never expected, a venom he'd use against whoever was closest, whoever he knew well enough to destroy with his words. He learned, later, that the drug stimulated parts of the brain that led to increased aggression and cruelty, but a lot of addicts blamed their drug of choice for how they acted. An alcoholic who beat his wife was still at fault, not the whiskey he drank.

It drove Frank mad, the nights he wasn't high and could think straight. Which part of it was real? Who was he, really? Did the drug make him act that way, or was it something inherent in him?

The first time he went to detox he'd been using for four years. He was so good at acting sober, at disguising his insults in kind language, no one at the vet's office realized until he indulged too much and threw empty cages across the room at an intern who hadn't properly cleaned their workstation. It was then the questioning started, and his locker stash was found, and the soft, sad looks were sent his way.

After his first detox, he was clean for eight months. He was doing so well, and then there was this hard day when he had to put down a sick puppy and the little girl who owned it cried the whole time and that  _ same fucking intern _ misplaced paperwork and he just. Needed something to relieve the stress.

He knew it was an excuse. He could've found another way to cope. But he didn't, and scored himself some O'Malley, and spent the night cackling as he verbally ripped open the newbie bartender at the bar nearest his place.

The second time around, he got an entire year and a half out of shooting up before he checked himself into detox. It wasn't a pleasant time, for anyone involved. Even now he couldn't tell who the real him was.

Either way, he knew one thing: he was never using again.

\- - -

“Doc! You're back!” came a very familiar voice as soon as Frank returned to work, and he plastered a smile on his face as he turned away from the computer where he'd been clocking in.

“Hello, Caboose,” he said. The man towered over him, no longer a troublesome intern but now a full fledged troublesome employee. He was beaming, genuinely pleased, and, not for the first time since leaving the hospital yesterday, Frank itched for a hit.

He shut the impulse down as Caboose said, “I'm glad, everyone else said you were sick so it's good to see you are not sick anymore. I think the doggies missed you.”

“Well, they won't have to miss me anymore!” Frank kept smiling, posture tense. Oblivious as ever, Caboose nodded enthusiastically.

“I missed you too, Doc,” he said, and Frank swallowed a sigh. He didn't know where that nickname had come from, considering he was not, actually, a doctor, yet it had permeated the office to the point where it was all anyone called him now. He'd long ago given up on trying to get people to use his actual name, but that didn't mean it had stopped irritating him.

“It's good to see you, Caboose,” was all Frank said, and then moved past him in order to get to the back where the animals were kept.

Caboose’s words did have some truth to them; when Frank walked in, there was a small ruckus as several of the animals they'd been keeping overnight for whatever reason jumped up at his arrival. They weren't any he recognized, but he'd always had a way with animals. It helped as, despite how outwardly friendly and open he tried to be, he never seemed to have much of a way with people.

He went through the cages, familiarizing himself with each animal and their charts, looking over their food and water bowls and the cleanliness of their environment. Everything seemed to be in order, which had Frank relaxing enough to pet a ferret that nosed at his hand while he was checking its cage.

_ It's going to be fine _ , he thought as he absentmindedly ran his hand over the ferret's back. He took a deep breath, released it slowly.

_ It's going to be fine. It's going to be fine. _

Pulling his hand away, Frank closed the ferret's cage and stood, repeating that sentence in his head like a mantra. If he thought it enough, it would come true. Right?

“Did you say hi to the doggies?” Caboose asked as soon as Frank emerged, the picture of innocent curiosity. Frank smiled, hoped it wasn't obvious that he was gritting his teeth.

_ It's going to be fine. _

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr at blackgoliath, and pillowfort at bulkhead


End file.
